14. Nov 11th Working the rice paddy

Today was a regular morning wake up and go day.  Leisurely breakfast of eggs and toast.  I have given up on the mystery meat sausages and bacon, which I shouldn’t eat anyways.

Phonsy and Noy drive us out to the Living Lands Organic farm.  It’s about a 20 minute drive and we’re the first to arrive.  The second group is an extended family of 6 from Switzerland. Most of the tourists we have met in our Laos travels have been from Europe; mostly France, and others from Belgium, England, Germany and a smaller number from the US and one from Canada (Montreal).  

Living Lands Farm is a community enterprise that was formed in 2005 by a group of farmers who wanted to make better use of their land, grow organic vegetables and give back to the local community.  Their main income source is showing tourists about the life of a typical Lao farmer.  Proceeds from the farm are used to help poor families with education and medical needs and local children have access to free English classes.  

Judith had already decided that she would be the photographer and she advised me that I should wear shorts.  The guide from Living Lands (who’s name I can’t remember) describes the events for the day.  I am going to learn how to be a typical Lao farmer today.   I’ve been told it’s fun.  Today I am Farmer Pang.

The guide picks out a conical bamboo hat for me to wear. We follow him into the museum part of the building which displays many of the tools and utensils a typical farm would have.  

LL guide showing a tool used for scraping out the flesh from the inside of a coconut.

Then we proceed outside for a lesson on rice.  

We’re all given rice to plant.  I’m holding unhusked grains of rice which I am to put into the field somewhere.  The kernels we eat are inside the husk.  

Then it’s out in the paddy fields to get our hands on demonstration.  We follow our LL guide as he walks on top of the berms separating the paddy fields.  We stop beside one of them and he explains how the field is prepared for planting the seedlings.  He deftly steps off the berm into the muck and invites a volunteer to join him.  I’m in the back watching at this point but after a pause, I step in.  It’s difficult to explain just how mucky that ooze felt.  At some point around my knee level, the muck firmed up and I couldn’t sink down any further.  But it was difficult to move around because it was hard to keep your balance to bring up a leg that was firmly sucked down into the muck.  

I gotta say I love this picture because it looks as if we’re doing some sort of weird dance and that we all have on the same dance outfit.  In reality, we’ve just finished planting our rice seed on a wet mud bed and now we’re just figuring out how to move in this muck to get out of it.    

The seeds are scattered pretty close to each other and can be seen on the mud bed.  After three to 4 weeks the seeds germinate and grow into small seedlings.  

What seedlings look like at the 4 week stage.  

The seedlings need to be transplanted into a prepared field.  This increases yield and reduces weeding by giving the transported seedlings a head start over weeds.  

The seedlings are pulled out of the starter beds and prepared for transplant.  For our purposes, we grab a handful of seedlings and carefully rinse the roots a bit and not damage them.  The LL guide advises us that the seedlings would be tied with rattan and shows us the tying method that would allow a young man to impress a girl.  Or not.  

My tied seedlings ready to be planted.  At the bottom of the picture is a muddy foot which I find hard to believe is mine.  

The seedlings need to be placed into a prepared field.  Apparently preparing a field means getting into said field with a water buffalo.

We are introduced to the handler and Suzanne the water buffalo.  Getting into this field with her was a particularly difficult step.  I think the entire group looked in horror when the water buffalo urinated where it was standing in that field just as the LL guide was explaining how to hold the plow. While I thought I would be able to disinfect myself sufficiently, I wasn’t sure I would go in if Suzanne crapped into the mud.  Fortunately I did not have to face that hurdle.  

There was only two of us in our group that did this step.  

Next up was the planting of the seedlings.  To do this you pick 3 or 4 seedlings and stick them into the mud in a grid.  

My little plot.  I was surprised just how many plugs of seedling came out of my bunch.  

The seedlings take about 4 months to become mature enough to harvest.  A bunch of stalks are gathered in one hand and cut about 4-6 inches from the ground with a scythe (blade facing away from you). 

I’m tying my stalks with rattan.  The LL guide advises that this is another point for a young man to impress a girl.  Or not.

At this point the field work is done so we all head back to the building where we wash our feet (thoroughly), dry and put back on our shoes.  

The next stage is threshing the rice to remove the kernels from the stalk.  We get a wooden board, hold down one of the legs with a foot so that it doesn’t bounce away, bring the bundle of rice over your head and smash it down on the board.  It’s a good way of taking out your aggressions, but I don’t have any now that I’m retired.  

Demo on beating the crap out of plants.

The kernels are gathered and a large fan is used to blow the chafe away from the kernels.  The outside bran of the kernels are removed by a large wooden log being pounded onto kernels.  The heavy log is a lever and lifted by pressing a foot down hard on the far end of the log.  It’s done pretty rhythmically.   Durning the demo, the assistant would swish the kernels around in the mortar as the log was raised and remove her hand when the log was on its way down.  I couldn’t look.  It wouldn’t take much for the timing to be off and for someone to have a crushed hand.

I took a turn at stomping.  Fortunately the assistant knew not to put her hand in the mortar when novices are around.  

After the husks are removed, the assistant scoops the mixture in the mortar into a flat wicker container.  She flips the far end into the air and the husks are blown and separated from the rice which falls back into the container.  

I try my hand at it and am pretty unsuccessful despite it looking like I know what I’m doing in the picture.  

Once you have just rice, you can proceed to cook it.  If you need rice flour, it needs to be milled.  There is a large milling stone set up with a large push bar to turn the stone.  The rice is added through a hole in the top stone and the rice is ground by turning the top stone against the bottom.  The stones have small grooves which catch the rice kernels and crushes them.  

 I tried it and then the person after me broke it.  End of grinding lesson.  

We then sidetrack to watch how cane sugar is crushed to extract the juice.  

The sugar can is run through the crusher several times to extract as much juice as possible.   We then get a glass of the juice to try it out.  I think it’s yummy.

After, we all proceed upstairs to a seating area to enjoy snacks made of rice.  We are given little baskets of the sticky rice and are taught a traditional way of using your fingers to eat the rice.  Both the fried rice cracker and the sweetened rice flour roll were tasty.  The flavour and texture of the rice flour roll reminded me of the egg roll cookies that are available at my local Chinese grocery store.  

In conclusion, it was very interesting to learn how to farm rice.  I also concluded that I’m grateful that I never needed to do that for a living. 

After it was over, we got into the SUV (Hyundai Santa Fe) with Noy and Phonsy who took us back to the hotel.  We had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves so we went back to the Indigo Cafe to have some iced cappuccino and mango smoothie.  We did stop in at that textile stores with the wall hangings and I introduced Judith to Miniso a Chinese based retailer of Japanese inspired goods. I bought some new socks to extend my next laundry day.  

 

We get back to the hotel to chill a bit and I decide to climb to the top of Mt Phousi.  I make arrangements to meet Judith at the foot of the hill and I head off.  It’s a few blocks away from our hotel and involves 328 steps to the top.  I intend to get pictures of the sunset.  I climb to the first level and discover that I need to pay 20,000 kip to go further.  I look up the stairs on the hillside and they seem to go on forever.  I figure I’ve only gone a third of the way so by the time I get to the top, sunset will be long over so I snap pictures from where I am and live with the fact I did not go all the way to the top of Mt. Phousi.

Sunset over Luang Prabang.

I met up with Judith and we proceed to check out the night market that was setting up.  We pass by a smoothie place and I order a coconut drink.  It’s gigantic; about a litre in size and cost $1.30 Cdn.  Judith decides to indulge in the Indigo Cafe again.  They have a table of pastries set up for the night market and she decides on some chocolate cake thing.  By the time I finish my smoothie, I’m fully waterlogged and decide to head back to the hotel to use the bathroom.  I arrange to meet Judith at the textile place so that she can buy her wall art.  

We both end up making our purchases there.  Good thing because it’s the last day in Luang Prabang.  Tomorrow morning we’re off  to the Elephant Conservation Centre in Sayaboury.